Quiet Talks with World Winners eBook

In chapter seven the music has ceased or softened
down and is taken up afresh by the Martyr Chorus.[18]
Again John’s figures give out. He declares
that nobody could count the multitudes that make up
this chorus. It is a polyglot chorus. They
sing in many different languages, but all blend into
full rhythm. It’s a scarred chorus, too.
These have been through great tribulation. Their
scars tell the mute story of the fierceness of the
fight, and the steadiness of their faith.

Through their singing runs a distinct strain of the
minor. Its strangely sweet cadence, learned in
many an hour of pain, runs as an under-chording through
the song of triumph that now fills their hearts and
mouths. And as they sing, the angel chorus and
the quartette drop to their knees, and swell the wondrous
refrain.

In chapter fourteen comes the music of the Chorus
of Pure Ones.[19] They are gathered close about
the person of Jesus. They sing to the accompaniment
of a great company of harpers. They sing with
a peculiar clearness in their tones. Theirs is
a new song. Purity always makes a music of its
own, unapproachable for sweetness and clearness.

The Victors’ Chorus rings out its
song in chapter fifteen.[20] These have been in the
thickest of the fighting. The smoke of the battle
has tanned their faces. They have struggled with
the enemy at close range, hip and thigh, nip and tuck,
close parry and hard thrust. And they have come
off victors. The ring of triumph resounds in their
voices, as to the sound of their own harps, harps
of God, they add their tribute of song to all the
others.

And at the last comes the great Hallelujah Chorus,
in chapter nineteen.[21] In response to the precentor’s
call, they all join their voices in one vast melody.
The Quartette, the Sextuples, the Angels, the Creation,
the Martyrs, the Pure-Ones, the Victors—­all
sing their song together.

John tries to tell what it was like. His mind
went quickly back to earlier days in his home city,
Jerusalem, when thousands of pilgrims crowded the
temple areas and narrow streets, and spread out over
the hills. The unceasing sound of their voices
in speech and in their pilgrim songs of praise comes
back to him. He says it was like that.

But that isn’t satisfactory. It is so much
more. He thinks of how the ocean-waves keep pounding,
with cannon-roar, on the rocky beach of his Patmos
prison isle. So he said it was like that.
But still more is needed to give an idea of the vast
volume of sound. And he remembers how sometimes
the thunders crashed and boomed and roared above him
as he lay in his solitude on that lonely bit of sea-girt
land. It was like that. It was like all
of these together.

And what is it they are singing? Well, there’s
a variety in the wording of their song, as well as
in their voices. But through all runs a refrain
that brings back to me the great London chorus.
It is this—­